View full sizeThe Rev. James Coyle, who was pastor of St. Paul's Cathedral from 1904 until he was shot to death in 1921 on the front porch at the rectory, will be the subject of prayers of repentance at an Ash Wednesday service at 6:30 p.m. at Highlands United Methodist Church. (The Birmingham News file)

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- The 1921 slaying of a Catholic priest in Birming­ham by a Methodist min­­ister will be the subject of repentance during a 6:30 p.m. Ash Wednesday service at Highlands United Meth­odist Church, 1045 20th Street South, led by United Methodist Bishop William Willimon.

"It's going to be a power­ful and a historic event," said Jim Pinto, director of the Father James E. Coyle Memorial Project. "We're not going to live in the past, but we want to more fully understand the past."

The Rev. James Coyle, who had been pastor of St. Paul's Cathedral since 1904, was shot to death on the porch of the wood-frame rectory, the priest's house next to the cathedral, on Aug. 11, 1921.

The murder trial was his­toric, partly because of the role played by future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Black defended the accused killer, the Rev. Ed­win Stephenson, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan paid the legal expenses of Stephenson, who was acquitted by a jury that included several Klan members, including the jury foreman, according to the book "Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race and Reli­gion in America," by Ohio State University law profes­sor Sharon Davies.

Stephenson, who con­ducted weddings at the Jef­ferson County Courthouse, was accused of gunning down Coyle after becoming irate over Coyle's officiating at the marriage of Stephen­son's daughter, Ruth, to a Puerto Rican, Pedro Gus­sman.

"I found it a fascinating story, deeply disturbing," Willimon said. "I became not only disturbed by the event and the trial, which was a national scandal, but by the Methodist church's response, or lack of it."

Willimon said there's no evidence Stephenson was ever disciplined by the church. The official Meth­odist publication at the time carried an anti-Catholic es­say weeks after the killing, he said.

No discipline

"The response of the church was nothing," Willi­mon said. After the acquit­tal, Stephenson once again was a regular at the court­house, conducting mar­riages.

"He was active up until the 1950s, marrying people at the courthouse," Willi­mon said.

As defense attorney, Black had Gussman summoned into the courtroom and questioned him about his curly hair and skin color. Lights were dimmed in the courtroom so the darkness of Gussman's complexion would be accentuated, said an Oct. 20, 1921, newspaper account of the final day of the trial. Davies described Black playing to the racism and anti-Catholicism of the day to gain an acquittal.

Black joined the Klan 18 months after the trial, but years later renounced his Klan ties and became one of the most liberal members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

"I've been haunted by this story," said Willimon. "We should repent because we can. We're not bound by the past."

Davies' book and a recent public TV documentary about the killing have brought renewed attention to Coyle's death and the trial that followed.

"I hope to say at this serv­ice that one of the nice things about being a Chris­tian is we can tell the truth, because we believe in a God who forgives," Willimon said.

"It's a perfect time and a fitting service to make such an act of repentance and reconciliation," said the Rev. Mikah Hudson, senior pastor at Highlands United Methodist Church and a 1994 graduate of McGill-Toolen High School, where Coyle was the first rector. "Telling those stories and unearthing the truth is part of the process of repentance of reconciliation. There are quiet resentments between Protestants and Catholics, Christians and Jews and Christians and Muslims. In dealing with them, we dis­cover the roots of such op­pressive things that con­tinue."